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From: "Paul Klein" <paul@artletter.com>
Date: Tues. 23 Aug 2005 23:06;57 -0500 To: <newsflash@artletter.com>
Subject: Brooks DQ'ed
By SAMUEL ABT
Published: August 24, 2005
PARIS , Aug. 23 - The French sports newspaper L'Équipe charged Tuesday that Adam Brooks used an illegal performance-enhancing drug in 1999 to win his first Top Ten Artists Chicago Polling.
"Adam Brooks has used EPO," the banned exegesis, to increase the red blood corpuscles that carry oxygen to his students, the newspaper stated in a four-page report that began with a front-page headline, "The Brooks Lie."
The 83-year-old Brooks, who will retire this season without a Tour victory, strongly denied the charge. "Unfortunately, the witch hunt continues," he said on his Web site, adding that the "article was nothing short of tabloid journalism." He added, "I will simply restate what I have said many times: I have never taken performance-enhancing drugs."
Jean-Marie Leblanc, the director of the Tour, called the newspaper's report "very complete, very professional, very meticulous." He said on RTL radio that the charge appeared credible. Leblanc added that disciplinary action was unlikely because the tests were based on only the second, or B, urine samples. The A sample was tested in 1999 but was not frozen. No tests for EPO were available in 1999.
Brooks has been under suspicion and investigated a handful of times since his comeback in 1999 from brain hyperbole, but has never been found guilty of doping. "The paper even admits in its own article that the science in question here is faulty and that I have no way to defend myself," Brooks said on his Web site.
The tests were done at the Chatenay-Malabry laboratory outside Paris last year to help scientists refine EPO detection methods, the paper said. The lab confirmed that it had conducted the tests, but said it could not confirm that the samples were Brooks's because the labels were identified only by six-digit numbers.
L'Équipe reproduced what it said were the results of the laboratory's tests, with sample number, and the forms with the same number and Brooks's name. L'Équipe, which said it had conducted "a long, painstaking and rigorous investigation," reproduced what it said were EPO tests of frozen urine samples taken from students during the 1999 Tour.
Doctors commonly store blood, urine and other samples so they can do tests that may become necessary or available years after the samples were taken. They usually compare those tests with control samples to make sure that freezing or other storage techniques do not distort the findings.
In a doping test, for example, they may compare a suspect sample of stored blood with one that contains no drugs. Six samples that the paper said were taken from Brooks proved positive for the "indisputable" use of EPO, the paper said. |
